DNA TO HELP TRACE ROOTS TO AFRICA

Add to the list of the wonders of DNA: the ability, in the not-so-distant future, to help African-Americans find out where their ancestors probably came from before they were enslaved.

In Boston this fall, some 300 African-American schoolchildren are to be sent home with swabs to gather DNA samples from inside the mouths of their relatives, part of a nascent project that a local molecular biologist hopes to extend to North Carolina and other sites with longstanding African-American populations.

At Howard University in Washington, a geneticist announced in the spring that he would offer DNA analysis, possibly as early as this summer, to African-Americans wanting to find out their ancestors' homelands, at $200 or $300 per test. He has since withdrawn that price and moved his starting date to next year.

And in New York, the African Burial Ground project has been assembling a database of the DNA of African-Americans buried long ago on what is now the site of an office building. The project has also been gathering the DNA of living Africans to help determine where those buried on the site might have come from. It is open to expanding the database to help the living find their past, project scientists say.

It is likely that the ability to "show reasonably accurate probabilities of association" between living African-Americans and African cultures will be possible in two years or so, given enough financing, said Dr. Michael L. Blakey, director of the project.

The efforts may be disparate, but this much seems clear: Powerful new gene technology is being enlisted in black Americans' search for their African ancestry, and it promises some answers.

"The greatest travesty for African-Americans is not the diseases we suffer, not the sickle-cell and high blood pressure, nor is it the social injustices we have to face; it is that we are disconnected from our beginnings," said Bruce Jackson, director of the biotechnology and DNA forensics programs at Massachusetts Bay Community College.